Pesto-Tomato Pasta

You guys are lucky that this meal stuck around long enough for me to photograph a "finished" photo!  This was one of those serendipitous meals that you throw together out of the scraps that you have around the kitchen and it turns out like you had followed a recipe from Martha Stewart.  Although, Martha would probably faint over her skillet if she saw me adding both packaged pesto AND canned stewed tomatoes to a recipe, rather than making everything from scratch.  Please don't tell on me to Martha (Grandma in NC, I'm lookin at you.).  

For this recipe, you'll need some type of pasta, preferably with ridges to hold all of this good sauce, one package of powdered creamy pesto, one can of stewed tomatoes, butter, and garlic.  That's it.

Start out by boiling your pasta, of course.  

Melt about 2 tbsp. of butter in a medium saucepan over medium-low heat.

Add a couple cloves of minced garlic, and let that sit nicely in the pan while it softens.  Keep the heat low here, because no one likes burned garlic.

After two or three minutes, add the creamy pesto sauce mix (which is the only kind of pesto I can use, because all other kinds have nuts, which Matt can't eat!)...

...and the can of tomatoes. 

Stir it all up, and raise the heat to medium high.  You can use your spoon to kind of smush up the larger pieces of tomato, or use diced tomatoes.  Let this simmer for a couple of minutes, while the pasta finishes cooking.  Drain the pasta, but try to keep some of the pasta water on the pasta.  What I did was pour the pasta through the colander, then threw the pasta straight back into the pan, without letting it drain at all.  The pasta water still has all of the good starch, which helps the sauce thicken a bit and stick to the pasta better.  Then just pour the sauce over the pasta, and serve!  

 

Matt and I had this for lunch on the porch last Sunday, garnished with fresh basil from my herb garden,  in phenomenal weather, and a bit of white wine, and it was just the perfect light lunch!

Let's take a moment, and just admire all of the colors in this photo.  I am just wild over the napkins that Mommi made us, and I love setting the table outside with all of the fun colors and patterns!

Easy Baked Tomatoes with Pesto

Is there another vegetable to epitomizes summer like the tomato?  A ripe, fresh tomato in July or August is perfection: juicy, bright, satisfying on its own.  One of John Paul's recent Southern finds is a tomato sandwich, which, if you grew up in the South or have family there, are probably well-acquainted with.  It consists of two slices of white bread spread with a bit of mayo and tops with thick slices of tomato and a dash of salt.  That's it.  Summer bliss.
Anyway, this post has nothing to do with sandwiches.
I saw a recipe for baked tomatoes with pesto in my beloved Ina Garten cookbook, but the full-sized tomatoes were sold out when I went grocery shopping!  Instead, I picked up some grape tomatoes, halved them and tossed them in a bowl with some pesto (about 1/2 a cup, but less is okay).  Bake in a 375-degree oven for 10 minutes, them serve topped with a bit of grated parmesan cheese.  We served this with some pan-seared fish, but would be great over some pasta or even as a rough bruschetta.  Easy and delicious!